1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a structure for preventing children from drowning in a pail, which pail contains a liquid that is present in amounts sufficient to suffocate a child who should happen to fall into the pail.
2. Brief Description of Prior Art
It has been determined that certain containers, commonly referred to as "five gallon plastic pails", pose a risk of injury or drowning to young children. There have been more than two hundred fifty documented instances over the past ten years of young children falling head-first into plastic pails containing liquids with resultant injury or drowning. Five gallon containers are used for bulk or commercial-sized quantities of a wide variety of products, including food, paint, and construction materials such as spackling compound. When emptied of their original contents, these containers are sometimes reused as pails by consumers. Similar five gallon containers are also sold new in stores as large-volume household pails.
It is surmised that young childrens' curiosity, combined with their crawling and pulling up while learning to walk, can lead to drowning when pails are used around the house. The aforesaid injuries and drownings can occur, for example, if a curious child were to crawl to a pail containing mop water, or some other liquid for use in performing household chores, and then pull him or herself up on the pail and lean forward to play in the water or to retrieve an object. Should the child topple into the pail, he or she may be unable to free themselves. These drownings can occur with just a few inches of liquid in the bottom of the pail. Given the size and shape of such pails, and their stability when they contain only a small amount of liquid, they may not tip over when a child leans over them and falls in.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,183,179 granted Feb. 2, 1993 to G. H. Morris deals with the problem of children drowning in pails, and suggests as a solution the inclusion of an integral pedestal in the bottom of the pail which pedestal projects upwardly toward the top of the pail a sufficient distance to prevent a child's head from descending into any liquid contained in the pail. The pedestal extends upwardly at least half the height of the pail, and is of sufficient diameter to produce a radial space in the pail which contains the liquid therein, which radial space is less than the diameter of the head of the typical toddling child. This solution requires the manufacture of specialized pails and the presence of the pedestal in the pail decreases the amount of liquid or other material that the pail can hold. The pedestal also limits the range of possible uses for the pail. For example, these specially configured pails will not be readily usable as mop pails. It is therefore submitted that the aforesaid solution to the problem of child drowning or injury in pails is impractical and is not likely to be commercially viable. Other solutions to the problem have been suggested, such as: rendering the pails unstable and readily tippable if a child were to lean on the pail; or rendering the pails incapable of being reused with liquids. In the latter case, the pails would contain original contents packaged in liners which are positioned in the pails. If one were to render pails unstable, their use would be severely limited because they would be prone to tipping over for many different reasons so that their contents would be in danger of spilling all of the time. If one were to render pails incapable of containing a liquid without also containing a liner, this would not address the intentional use of pails for household chores which are intended to contain liquids; and would also not stop one from putting liquids in the pails if one were to leave the liner in the pail.